Juvenile though my tastes often seem, I'm actually going with the serene Buddhist monk movie over Jude Law Battling the Nazi Robots. I've impressed even myself.
No, seriously, many reviews I've seen have made this film sound like an art house chore, like the kind of film you see so that you can later tell your friends you saw a movie about monks that was in Korean and didn't feature a single Chingy song on the soundtrack.
But Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (hereafter SSFWS) moves right along like any other enjoyable piece of entertainment. There's a lot of depth to the narrative, of course, but it's not a film that requires intense concentration to enjoy. It's simply a beautifully rendered, exquisitely photographed, and delicately moving story about one man's development from troubled youth to chastened adult to wizened elder.
And it's not just a catchy title! The film really does consist of four main vignettes, each set in one of the seasons, with a brief coda set back in the spring. And this format allows Ki-duk to not only skip around in time as he pleases, focusing in on the most significant, salient events in the monk's life, but also provides the film with a splendid visual motif. As the seasons change, so does the main character, whose destiny, along with that of his Master, seems peculiarly tied to the lush valley landscape (amazingly photographed by Dong-hyeon Baek).
The monk and his master live on a floating monastery in the middle of a lake. I'm not sure if any surroundings actually exist like this in present-day Korea (when the film is set), but I certainly hope they do. The setting is phenomenally realized, with the faded greens of the treetops off-setting the murky blues of the river, all set around a drifting temple.
In the opening sequence, we see the monk as a child, tormenting small animals by tying them to rocks. He takes strange delight in watching a fish, a frog and a snake struggle under the weight of the burden, and doesn't think twice about his cruelty until he is caught by his master. His punishment consists of searching for and freeing all the animals with a large stone tied to his own back. This will be the format for all of the vignettes - the young pupil behaves rashly or without proper consideration, he is reprimanded sternly but fairly by his master, and in fulfilling some sort of meaningful task, learns a valuable lesson bringing him closer to the sage enlightenment of his elder.
Of course, the monk's transgressions will only get worse as he ages, and Ki-duk doesn't shy away from making his protagonist considerably unlikable during certain portions of the story. But just as the older monk sees through his missteps to the worthwhile man underneath, Ki-duk invites us not to judge the young man, but to search his story for meaning in our own lives.
I will not go into the further goings-on of the plot, because specific narrative is hardly the point of this film. In some ways, it's the ideal foreign film for people who usually dislike "movies with subtitles." There's very little dialogue, and the narrative drifts along languidly, like the small boat the characters pilot across the lake to the rocky shores across the way. Save any cultural references or historical allusions I may have missed, the film likely plays very similar to Korean and American audiences, which only enhances its themes of mutual understanding and unspoken bonds.
Like a Zen koan, the simplicity of the storytelling disguises the reservoir of possible meanings and interpretations lying just under the surface. Ki-duk fills the corners of his story with mystery and intrigue, allowing us only so much access to the inner lives of his characters and the circumstances which surround their world.
What Ki-duk clearly brings with him is a reverence for Buddhist philosophy, particularly the ideas of repetition. His film is structured around repeated occurances, moments, imagery and music. The pitch-perfect score reminded me of some of Phillip Glass' work for films like Koyaanisqatsi, but obviously with native Korean instruments. You know, the repetitive, minimalist thing.
There are so many repeated images, I stopped trying to recall them all for review purposes. The animals to whom the monk is cruel during the opening scenes are revisited occasionally, particularly when the monk faces his own trials and challenges. Statues of the Buddha, especially one taken by the monk during one of his several trips away from the monastery, play an integral part of the story. And even individual images seem to hold intricate mysteries merely because of their undeniable, odd beauty. A red cloth floats down a recently-thawed stream. A woman with a covered face carries a baby across a frozen lake. A man does calligrophy on a wooden dock with the tail of a white cat. I could go on, but there's no point. The storytelling is almost entirely visual - the film must be viewed to be appreciated at all.
So, I'll leave you merely with an entreaty to watch this film. It's availble now for rent or purchase in fine DVD stores everywhere. I'll be updating my Best of the Year list to include some of the films I've seen recently, so be on the lookout for this title, which is certain to make the list in some capacity.
It can't work in fact, that is exactly what I believe.
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